Not Quite a LifeDebt
by Quiddie15
Summary: OneShot. Angelina reluctantly agrees to help Draco improve his quidditch skills. What happens when their training session goes a little wonky?


Hey friends...working on updates for my two in-progress stories. I decided to post this in the meantime. It's nothing special, and by no menas my best work. But it's been sitting here for ages, and I haven't had the heart to delete it. So enjoy! ((Oh, and I just want to send a special thanks to Angelface04 and Evilevergreen for keeping me on-task!))

Special thanks to Emmylou at FictionAlley Park for the spare plot bunny!

Disclaimer: You know the drill…J.K. Rowling owns everything!

* * *

Angelina fidgeted nervously as she leaned on the broom shed at the far end of the quidditch pitch, her own broom clutched tightly in her hand. She pulled her robes tighter around her and listened intently through the winter silence for the sound of footsteps marring the new-fallen snow. Finally she heard his approach. 

"Good to see your silly Gryffindor nobility didn't stand in the way of taking advantage of an opportunity, Johnson."

Angelina raised her eyes to meet the hard gray gaze of Draco Malfoy, so sickened by his words that she was ready to break their deal…as well as a few choice bones of his. She was only doing it as a favor to her parents. Longtime friends with the Malfoys, the Johnsons offered their daughter in place of professional coaching...without asking Angelina, of course. This wasn't wrong; it was just…well, what exactly was it?

It was _just_ a few tutoring lessons, teacher to pupil. Besides, they'd already played each other this year, so what did it really matter? Just because he was…well…HIM. Her teammates would disown her if they ever found out. But hadn't he taken a big risk in agreeing to try this as well?

"Johnson! You having some sort of fit? Let's get going…I'm freezing my arse off out here."

"Yeah, I know. Better get on with it then."

One final scan around the horizon to make sure they weren't being watched, and she opened the crate of quidditch balls and grabbed the quaffle before releasing the bludgers. She whistled loudly to Malfoy to follow her lead and mount their brooms.

Leveling off at about fifty feet, Angelina turned to face Draco, eyeing the paths of the dual bludgers carefully. She bit her lip to suppress the grin pulling at the corners of her mouth as she watch Malfoy whip his head about to find the bludgers.

"This is a focus drill, Malfoy. You've got to learn to be able to concentrate on more than one thing at a time. Try to keep an ear out for the bludgers while we play catch with this."

She held up the quaffle and scowled when Malfoy gave a loud, derisive snort. "Look, I can leave right now if you're going to be a prat about it."

"Right, let's have it then."

The first few minutes of play passed without incident. He heard the bludgers soon enough to dodge them. Smirking arrogantly, he pretended to yawn. "And my parents said you were just as good as a private trainer? Really, 'Lina, haven't you got anything more challe-"

His paused midsentence as Angelina's affronted expression turned suddenly into pleasant alarm, and her eyes refocused directly over his left shoulder. He quickly jerked his head behind him, and hardly had enough time to register the approaching bludger before leaning into a panicked Sloth-Grip Roll.

Perhaps Angelina should have mentioned beforehand which sorts of maneuvers work best in avoiding bludgers during matches. She _would _have made a point to add that icy handles during the winter make tactics that rely primarily on broom-gripping (i.e. the Sloth-Grip Roll) unadvisable. In all fairness though, he should have known that already. She ought not be to blame.

But even as she tried to mentally absolve herself from his lack of knowledge, he slipped and began to plummet; a flapping green blur rapidly approaching the pearly-white ground below him. She muttered some grousing swear under her breath and dipped her broom into a steady dive, catching Draco by the neck of his quidditch robes. Adjusting her grip on him, she made no other move to let him up onto her broom, contenting herself with letting him dangle precariously. "You were saying, Draco?"

What proceeded next from his mouth were a slew of words that one really shouldn't utter if they're at risk of being dropped thirty feet to the ground. "Honestly, Mr. Malfoy, are you always this foul? And you ought to be nicer to me. I don't know how steady my grip is."

Each of her purred words soured Draco's temperment exponentially. "Shut it, Johnson. I wouldn't play around if I were you..."

"Do you really think you're in any sort of place to threaten me right now?" For effect, she allowed an inch or two of material to slip through her fingers.

"Johnson, if you drop me I swear on my father's life I'll make you pay."

"What did I _just_ say about threatening me? What could you possibly do? Tell on me? And all your little Slytherin pals would know that you can groveling to me for quidditch lessons because you're desperate for help. Even from a Gryffindor like me."

"Not quite, Johnson. They'd all know that you for some reason agreed to help train me. Wouldn't that outrage your teammates a tick? And if they asked me...quidditch wouldn't be the **only** thing you helped me with." He winked to drive his point home.

With a gutteral cluck in the back of her throat, Angelina narrowed her eyes, looking mutinous. She clenched her jaw and tilted her head incrementally to the side before the corner of her mouth twitched and she let him go.

Fortunately for Draco, he fell less than ten feet, since she'd been slowly lowering them on her broom. But the fear was real enough, and if Angelina had been able to see beneath his robes, she would have known that Draco had, in fact, pissed himself. "Dammit, Johnson..."

The echoing sound of her laughter drowned out Malfoy's tirade.Only when she saw him approaching her looking murderous did she stop and pullout her wand, pointing it directly at him and wiping a tear of mirth from her eye. "Don't think I won't hex you into next week, Draco, because I-"

For the second time within a few minutes, a bludger was barreling towards Malfoy's back. This time, though, before he even really had an idea what was going on, Draco watched Angelina's wand twitch upwards as she shouted "Arresto Momentum!"

He ducked and covered his head, unsure of what she'd cast on him. He stood, feeling quite alright and whole. Angelina had a strange look on her face; her wand still pointed at the same spot. He turned behind him to see a bludger, completely frozen in midair, only inches from what would have been the back of his head.

Angelina let out a deep breath and lowered her wand, the bludger also falling feebly to the ground. Draco was at a highly unusual loss for words. "I guess...this...ummm...makes us even."

"Shut it, Draco."

She ran her fingers though her hair to regain her composure. She could have let him get hit. It _probably_ wouldn't have killed him. More unnerving than the close call had been her immediate concern on Draco's behalf. She _could_ have let him be hit. But she didn't _want_ him to be hit. This was absolute treason by Gryffindor's standards.

"Look, Johnson..."

"I said shut it!"

"No, look!"

For some serendipitous reason, the other six members of the Gryffindor team were rounding the corner to the pitch, laughing as Fred or George (it was hard to tell at that distance) gestured wildly. "Bloody hell. It gets better, Draco."

She pointed to the opposite end of the pitch, were a huddle of emerald-robed boys purposefully strode across the grass.

Thinking along the same lines, the tall Gryffindor and rat-faced younger Slytherin lept away from each other and began to squabble. Loudly. The two groups descended on the duo quickly and began pulling each other apart and adding to the cacophony. Just as the row threatened to go to blows, Angelina leaned over toward Draco under the guise of pushing Oliver away from Marcus.

Malfoy quickly got the hint and leaned in. "Thanks for the save, Johnson. Really."

She laughed a little as she struggled to keep her boys back. "Whatever, Draco. I won't do it again."

"Like I'd give you the opportunity."

"Whatever. But you owe me...don't forget it."

"Hardly," he smirked, "so, same time next Sunday?"

She strained to hold her smile as the twins jostled her from behind, trying to get to Adrien Pucey. "Nah, make it an hour later. Fred and I are going to nick a bottle of firewhiskey at Hogsmeade on Saturday, so we'll probably-"

Luckily his groan of disgust was lost in the shuffling of the snow. "I don't need to hear about you and the blood-traitor's sex lives..."

"...be a little _hungover_, you bloody pervert. I'll be a bit tired, so you might have to watch your own arse instead of me saving it every five minutes."

He snorted, backing away from the growing din, but adding at the last minute, "I know, I know...I'm building up a regular bloody life-debt to you. Ciao, Gryffindork."

"Up yours, snake-boy."


End file.
